VirnetX Holding Corporation is asking for $532 million from Apple for using patented technology for communication services like FaceTime, iMessage and more, the firm told a federal jury today, according to Bloomberg.
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“Apple hasn’t played fair. They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission,” VirnetX lawyer Brad Caldwell of Caldwell Cassady told the jury in Tyler, Texas.
Greg Arovas, Apple's lawyer, said that Apple believes in "fairness and protecting intellectual property," noting that VirnetX "keeps moving the boundary" and asking for "more and more and more" money. In 2012, the firm was awarded $368 million in a jury trial. However, the decision was thrown out in 2014 as the verdict was influenced by the instructions given to the jury during the trial.
The patent suit can be traced back to 2010 over a pair of patents related to virtual private networking (VPN) connectivity. This retrial, which will last through next week, will largely focus on whether any VirnetX patents are infringed in either FaceTime or iMessage. Apple was already found to be infringing the patents with its VPN On Demand service. Apple cannot make the same arguments they made in the first trial, however.
VirnetX makes a majority of its revenue on patent licensing. Arovas said that, on a per-unit basis, VirnetX's $200 million settlement with Microsoft over similar violations is less than a tenth of what its currently seeking against Apple.
Top Rated Comments
You might want to read the article, not much love on MR for patent trolls.
First, isn't litigation a way of achieving the "license them out at a fair price" principle you want? How do you get someone to pay anything at all without being willing to enforce the law? Without threat of litigation, nobody would pay anything.
Second, what about universities and the patent portfolios they develop from their research labs? Often licensing pays for future research grants, but sometimes litigation is needed to get those that refuse to pay at all.
Third, what about financiers? We need investors (venture capital, or otherwise) to invest in startups. Since often startups don't work out, they need some collateral to secure their investment. Often IP is the only asset small startups have to offer. Shouldn't the investors be able to recoup some of their losses in that scenario by licensing, and litigating where needed, that IP?
Or I should patent the method of putting pants on and sue everyone
What we must not forget that many of these trials are perfectly orchestrated by law 'engineers' with a hidden agenda. While the law might be quite the matrix for most of us, the techniques they use in the end, look baffling easy.
In these reigns where stakes are unbelievably high, many things don't look like they are. It's well possible that a patent troll sueing company X is in fact somewhere owned by company X.